RavePoetry International... rich and substantial ... the length and breadth of the book suggest careful, years-long work ... Aware of the heaviness of death, Hass’s verse does not lean towards weariness or despair; to the contrary, it bursts with energy and striking detail ... With an amalgamation of styles and subjects, the entire collection itself can be described as a long, hefty notebook in the best of ways. Summer Snow seems to unfold organically with much original thought and meditative consideration of the poetic art from one of its masters, a poetry he envisions as \'sheet lightning in a summer field.\' Readers will want to return to it again and again.
Jia Tolentino
RaveSan Francisco ChronicleThe book is a blessing to read simply because of its blade-sharp metaphors alone, which Tolentino crafts with the precision of a heart surgeon and the ingenuity of a writer who can come up with better comparisons than the cliched heart surgeon ... Tolentino is both hilarious and deadly accurate ... But the book’s pivotal work lies in its documentation. Tolentino is essentially a historian of our time. Each piece in Trick Mirror examines the sociopolitical and economic factors that made her generation what it is today ... Regardless of their method, each essay is ruthless in its truth-finding, which is, perhaps, the ethos of Trick Mirror ... reveals and breaks down modern-day truths that are unappealing, but necessary to understand. There is no doubt that Tolentino’s work will go on to be preserved in digital libraries like JSTOR (or whatever we’ll have in the future), destined to be pored over and cited as the work of historical documentation that it is. If the climate-change apocalypse does happen and the internet finally meets its doom, then hopefully the pages of Trick Mirror will survive as a testament to what once was ... No matter what, Trick Mirror is evidence that Jia Tolentino must — and will — outlast the generations she writes about.
R O Kwon
RaveUSA TodayThe Incendiaries is primarily character-driven, relying on fragmented memories relayed by Phoebe, Will and Leal leading up to the clinic bombing. This works because Kwon\'s trio is undeniably fascinating. She unpacks each person’s motivations, finding out how the cracks in their lives led them to fall in or out of love with religion. But despite acknowledging faith’s seductive power, Kwon never makes excuses for the Jejah’s actions. Sometimes her imagery is sparse, but when it hits, it strikes with lush beauty or ugliness, artfully revealing truths that Kwon’s characters may try to deny ... Kwon’s novel is urgent in its timeliness, dizzyingly beautiful in its prose, and poignant in its discovery of three characters fractured by trauma, frantically trying to piece back together their lives.
